width of dropdowns

hi all,

i'd really appreciate your opinions on what the best option would be for my
situation both usability and
accessibility-wise:

background on the site:  
- designed to 800x600 (client extremely opposed to
horizontal scrolling (as am i for the most part)
- no javascript
- templatised
- in both english and welsh

on some pages the site will return data to the user in the form of
dropdowns.  the width of the dropdowns is
dependent on the number of characters in the lines(the lines are addresses
and one of them may only be 20
characters long, but another one may be 400 characters long and that would
dictate the overal width).

i am thinking i have the following options:

1.) allow for the full address to be displayed (so
that the user may have to scroll horizontally, but at
least none of them are ambiguous).

2.) implement three dots (...) after a certain number
of characters.

i would be interested in hearing other options if you
have any.

i am currently leaning towards option 1 because the option 2 would be
difficult to impose because i am not
sure what a 'user-friendly' length is for addresses to be cut off at and
doubt this would be the same in
english as it is in welsh (could rules be different for the languages and if
so, does anyone know when it
would be user-friendly to implement (...) to an address in english and in
welsh?

also - i'm guessing there would be issues with screen readers.  would the
screen reader read 'dot, dot, dot'
or sthg like that?

also, because of the ambiguity, it is easy for the user to chose an
incorrect address (especially because
postcodes appear at the end of the address) which could mean a vicious
circle of errors. 

so, can anyone think of any other options?

thanks very much in advance,

julie

Received on Wednesday, 19 November 2003 11:18:32 UTC